• Founder of the Staubach Company, which he sold to Jones Lang LaSalle last year for $613 million

• Quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys, 1969—1979

After you finished your Hall of Fame career with the Cowboys, you could have lived anywhere you wanted. Why did you stay in Dallas? When my wife, Marianne, and I came to Dallas, in 1969, we had already started our family, and we added two more children here. Through the eleven years that I played for the Cowboys, our kids came to love Dallas and the state. My wife and I had both grown up in Cincinnati—we were high school sweethearts—but we fell in love with the city as well. With a family, I decided that I had better make sure that I had something to fall back on in case I got hurt playing football. I had a bachelor of science in engineering, a BS, and that’s what I was: a BS in engineering. We didn’t have any money and my savings from the Navy was nothing, so I went to work for the Henry S. Miller Company. Mr. Miller was fantastic, and I learned a lot about the real estate business. Then I started my own company a few years before I retired from the Cowboys. From a business standpoint, Dallas was a great place to be. So when it came down to family and business, I don’t think we could have picked a better city in the country.

When those two things work out, it makes the decision easier. That’s right. Marianne and I never once thought about leaving Dallas.

You’ve certainly lived in Dallas long enough to have seen a lot of change. What stands out to you, both good and bad? This is a city in the middle of the country that was built to grow, but you have to be careful to do it in the right way. When I first arrived, the Tollway didn’t go north. There was nothing past 635. Once Dallas started growing, you had to have the roads. You had to have the great airport. You had to have light-rail. It hasn’t been a piece of cake, but Dallas has done a lot of great things in those areas. I do wish that we had grown in a way that we kept downtown as the heart of Dallas. The Arts District is a perfect example of progress, but some of our projects have had a start-and-stop quality to them. When I first came to Dallas, for example, they were talking about what to do with the Trinity River. Things will happen, but we have to stay focused, particularly with downtown and South Dallas. And we have to make the case why those areas are so important to North Dallas. One of the disappointments to me is that we haven’t recognized enough the importance of inclusion and diversity. For a time, the city really didn’t understand the evils of discrimination. Consider South Dallas, which in so many ways is prettier than parts of North Dallas. But it still has a long way to go because we didn’t recognize the needs of the African American, Hispanic, and Asian populations. One of our opportunities now is to understand that we can’t make decisions based on race. We need to think about those things differently, have the ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, and make up for some of the sins of the past.

When Mayor Tom Leppert announced his candidacy for the 2007 election, he did it at a school in South Dallas. He was clearly making the point that he wanted to run a citywide campaign. And he really gets it. When we first came to Dallas, there were apartments that you couldn’t lease if you were African American. Having come out of the Navy, that shocked me. It’s degrading, and it’s wrong. Mayor Leppert is being inclusive. You can’t solve all of the problems overnight, but you have to make sure that they are a priority.

Tell me about some of your favorite places in Dallas. When it comes to restaurants, we hold our own with cities like New York or Chicago. My family and I were out at Neighborhood Services the other night, and we recently took our kids to Shinsei. We also love Al Biernat’s and Dean Fearing’s restaurant, at the Ritz-Carlton. We enjoy experimenting with places. All of our kids are back in Dallas now, so on Saturdays we typically eat out for both lunch and dinner.

If you were showing Dallas off to guests, where would you take them? You always want to go to Dealey Plaza and visit the Sixth Floor Museum to consider the history that happened there. We have a lot of friends who come to visit, and my wife